Reply to critics

ABSTRACT

In this reply to critics, I reply to Stephanie Leary’s, Kris McDaniel’s, Tristram McPherson’s and David Plunkett’s articles on my book Choosing Normative Concepts. One central theme in the replies concerns what is the best strategy for the so-called ardent realist when it comes to responding to the challenge I present in the book. Another central theme concerns the criticisms of my characterizations of what normative concepts and normative properties are.     

The revisionist's rubric: conceptual engineering and the discontinuity objection

This paper is about conceptual engineering (CE). Specifically, it discusses a common objection to CE, which I call the Discontinuity Objection. According to the Discontinuity Objection, CE leads to problematic discontinuities in subject and/or inquiry – making it philosophically uninteresting or irrelevant. I argue that a conceptual engineer can dismiss the Discontinuity Objection by showing that the pre-engineering concept persists through the proposed changes. In other words, the Discontinuity Objection does not apply if the proposal involves identity-preserving changes. Two existing views on identity-preserving changes are considered and rejected. I then argue that an identity-preserving conceptual change is one that allows the concept to continue to perform its function. A concept’s function is its job, its point and purpose, its role in a conceptual repertoire. In a slogan: Preserve a concept’s function, and you preserve the concept itself; preserve the concept, and you preserve the subject. The paper concludes by discussing some implications of this view.     

Unconscious phantasy and its conceptualizations: An attempt at conceptual integration

That there is a lack of consensus as to how to decide between competing, at times even contradictory theories, and about how to integrate divergent concepts and theories is well known. In view of this situation, the IPA Committee on Conceptual Integration (2009–2013) developed a method for comparing the different versions of any given concept, together with the underlying theories and fundamental assumptions on which they are based. Only when situated in the same frame of reference do similarities and differences begin to appear in a methodically comprehensible and reproducible form. After having studied the concept of enactment followed by the publication of a paper in this Journal in 2013, we proceeded to analyze the concept of unconscious phantasy while at the same time continuing to improve our method. Unconscious phantasy counts among the central concepts in psychoanalysis. We identified a wide range of definitions along with their various theoretical backgrounds. Our primary concern in the present paper addresses the dimensional analysis of the semantic space occupied by the various conceptualizations. By way of deconstructing the concepts we endeavoured to establish the extent to which the integration of the different conceptualizations of unconscious phantasy might be achieved.     

Conceptualizations of Giftedness and the Development of Talent: Implications for Counselors

The authors present a historical perspective on giftedness, highlighting the impact of key research studies on practice, research, and policy. A comprehensive model is presented emphasizing that giftedness is domain specific and developmental and involves the cultivation of psychosocial as well as cognitive skills. Implications for counselors are discussed, specifically which psychosocial issues and skills should be the focus of counseling at each stage of talent development and what counselors can do to support the development of gifted students.     

Feedback influences children's reasoning about math equivalence: A meta-analytic review

ABSTRACT

Decades of research have focused on children's reasoning about math equivalence problems for both practical and theoretical insights. Not only are math equivalence problems foundational in arithmetic and algebra, they also represent a class of problems on which children's thinking is resistant to change. Feedback is one instructional tool that can serve as a key trigger of cognitive change. In this paper, we review all experimental studies (N = 8) on the effects of feedback on children's (ages 6–11) understanding of math equivalence. Meta-analytic results indicate that feedback has positive effects for low-knowledge learners and negative effects for high-knowledge learners, and these effects are stronger for procedural outcomes than conceptual outcomes. Findings highlight the variable influences of feedback on math equivalence understanding and suggest that models of thinking and reasoning need to consider learner characteristics, learning outcomes, and learning materials, as well as the dynamic interactions among them.     

“心灵鸡汤”对温度知觉、他人评价和自我评价的影响

本研究基于具身认知观点和概念隐喻理论,采用三个实验探讨了 “心灵鸡汤”对环境温度的感知觉影响、对陌生他人人品评价的影响以及对自我人格特质评定的影响。结果发现,“心灵鸡汤”的阅读能有效提高个体对环境温度的评定,且不存在性别差异;阅读“心灵鸡汤”后倾向于对陌生人的人品有更高的积极评定;“心灵鸡汤”对自我评定不存在显著影响。     

On the Nature of Philosophy

This paper claims that what philosophy primarily does is interpret our notions, offer ways of understanding these notions that are not scientific in nature but not contrary to science either. The paper draws a distinction between conceptual analysis, a highly constrained enterprise that is supposed to bring to light what was in the concept all along, and the interpretation of notions, a creative enterprise that offers ways of understanding notions that were not already prefigured by the content of these notions—philosophy consists in the latter, not the former. It explains how these interpretations are justified and what the difference is between better and worse interpretations. The remainder of the paper is organized around three headings: philosophy and science, philosophy and language, and philosophy and progress. It claims that in philosophy there is no real progress, but that philosophy does move forward because the notions at issue are endlessly interpretable.     

Conceptual engineering as concept preservation

In the burgeoning philosophical literature on conceptual engineering improving our concepts is typically portrayed as the hallmark activity of the field. However, Herman Cappelen has challenged the idea that we can know how and why conceptual changes occur well enough to actively intervene in revising our concepts; the mechanisms of conceptual change are typically inscrutable to us. If the ‘inscrutability challenge’ is correct, the practical aspect of conceptual engineering may seem to be undermined, but I argue that endorsing such pessimism would be a mistake. Even if the inscrutability challenge is correct, conceptual engineers often have good reasons to try to preserve existing concepts. I examine several cases where concept preservation is important and draw lessons about this activity for conceptual engineers.     

Photograph method fosters direct access to second-language word meaning: Direct evidence from a word-picture matching task

This experiment was designed to investigate conceptual links directly through a word–picture matching task in children. Participants were asked to indicate between two pictures the one depicting the same concept as the newly learned L2 word (target). One of the two pictures was the target, while the other was either semantically related to it or was unrelated. To investigate whether learning methods modulate L2 word processing, two learning methods were compared: an L2-photograph method and an L1-L2 method. Results showed a semantic interference effect only with the L2-photograph method: Children responded more slowly in the related condition than in the unrelated one. The learning method modulated L2 word processing and L2 word meaning was not necessarily accessed through L1 mediation in the first steps of learning. The method used paves the way for the direct investigation of conceptual links.